So I took Buster to the mechanic, Dan, and he got everything working, and while I was writing the check I mentioned that I was going to Bimini.

Dan gave me a concerned look.

“You’re going to Bimini?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, over the sound of Buster decaying in the background.

“You better get some spare parts,” he said. He started naming things like “transgressor nodule” and “three-sixteenths retribution valve.” I wrote it all down, went to the marine-supply store, and dutifully purchased every item on the list, although it would have been simpler to just pick up the Big Economy Box O’ Random Parts, because my mechanical skills are limited to annually installing the new registration decal on my car license plate. If Buster conked out in the Gulf Stream, I would sit in the exact center of the boat and throw engine parts at the sharks.

But I was as ready as I was going to get. So early one Friday morning in July, Beth and I arose and—as bold seafaring people have done for thousands of years—went to a bakery. “Never attempt to cross the Gulf Stream without fresh pastries” is one of the Coast Guard’s Rules for Safe Boating. Then we drove to where we’d put Buster into the water earlier, climbed aboard, and headed out to sea, with fear in our hearts and crumbs in our laps.

At this point I need to get technical for a moment and explain how to navigate to Bimini. Bimini is roughly east of Miami, so the simplest approach would be to steer a compass course of approximately 90 degrees Fahrenheit longitude. However, you also have to consider the fact that the Gulf Stream flows northward at an average of 2.5 amps, although this varies in certain areas depending on local shark motion. And then there are your winds, your tides, your barometric pressure, your jellyfish, your big, disgusting wads of floating seaweed, and your solar eclipses, one of which had occurred the day before we left. Taking all of these factors into consideration, I examined the charts, did a few navigational calculations, and decided that the best way to get to Bimini would be to follow Steele’s boat.

Steele is Howard Steele Reeder II, a friend of ours who had graciously agreed to lead us to Bimini. He’s a boating enthusiast, although that phrase seems too weak to describe the level of his interest, kind of like describing someone as a “heroin fancier.” Steele, like most boating enthusiasts, is always in the process of simultaneously (a) fixing something on his current boat and (b) thinking about trading it in for another boat with a new and different set of decaying parts. For the Bimini voyage, he had to borrow his brother’s boat, because his own boat, which he had just bought, had already broken. Soon the marine industry will develop a boat that is prebroken right at the factory. When they finish building it, they’ll just tow it out into the middle of the Gulf Stream and sink it, then hand you the bill of sale. Boating enthusiasts will be in heaven.

On board with Steele were his wife, Babette, and another couple, Linda and Olin McKenzie. Olin is a dentist. “Never attempt to cross the Gulf Stream without a qualified dentist” is another one of the Coast Guard’s Rules for Safe Boating. Too many maritime tragedies could easily have been avoided if the victims had been more aware of the insidious dangers of plaque formation.

But the most important passenger on Steele’s boat was the Loran unit. This is a little electronic device that somehow, we think by magic, knows where Bimini is. “It’s over there!” says the Loran, via little electronic arrows. This is a truly wonderful navigational aid, and I hope that someday it will be installed in every automobile, because it would be pretty funny to see thousands of cars driving 55 miles per hour into the Atlantic Ocean.

So Steele followed the Loran, and we followed Steele, bouncing along in Buster. Buster is not one of those big, heavy, Orson Welles-style boats that plow sedately through the sea. Buster is a small, light, Richard Simmons-style boat that likes to skip gaily across the tops of the waves, churning your internal organs into pudding.

So we bounced through Biscayne Bay and out into the Atlantic. The tall buildings of downtown Miami grew smaller and smaller behind us (actually, they stayed the same size; they only appeared to get smaller, because of the Greenhouse Effect). There was nothing in front of us except water, which was dark blue, because the Gulf Stream is approximately 23.6 million feet deep. Anything could be lurking down there. There could be things down there with eyeballs the size of your entire boat. It’s best not to think about it. It’s best not to look ahead, either, because there’s an alarming quantity of nothing out there. It’s best to look wistfully back at Miami, getting smaller and smaller and smaller. At times, in the past, I had been critical of Miami, but out there at sea I was becoming a major civic booster. I was realizing that Miami has a lot of excellent qualities, the main one being that it is not located in the Gulf Stream. If your engine breaks down in Miami, all you have to do is pull your car over to the side of the road, put the hood up, and wait for a passing motorist to take a shot at you. But that seemed safer than being out in the ocean, relying entirely on two smallish boats and a little electronic device. What if the Loran wasn’t pointing us to Bimini at all? What if Steele’s brother forgot to pay his loran bill, and the device, chuckling electronically to itself, was steering us to Iceland?

These thoughts ran through my mind as I munched pensively on a poppy-seed muffin and Miami got smaller, and smaller, and smaller, and finally ... Miami was gone. There was nothing behind us, nothing ahead of us, nothing on either side, except water. I didn’t look down because I didn’t want to catch even a glimpse of a giant eyeball. I kept my eyes Krazy Glued to the back of Steele’s boat, trusting that he would ... HEY. What the hell is Steele doing? He’s STOPPING! Out HERE!! “WHAT IS IT?” I shouted.

“FISH!” Steele said.

That’s right: There we were, in extremely deep water, completely out of sight of civilization, probably miles off course, possibly with icebergs drifting our way, and Steele and Olin had decided to try to catch fish, which are readily available in cooked form at any decent restaurant. So for the longest 10 minutes of my life, Steele and Olin fished while I circled them. I didn’t dare stop Buster, for fear that he’d decide the trip was over and refuse to go again.

Finally, thank God, Olin caught a fish, which he released because it was too small. Your true sportsperson prefers a fish that is large enough so that when you cut it open, it spews slime all over the entire boat. But the fish had satisfied Olin’s and Steele’s urge to angle, and soon we were off again.

We bounced along for another hour, with nothing appearing on the horizon. At one point, Steele and Olin went through an elaborate pantomime for my benefit: They got out a chart, looked at it, shrugged elaborately, pointed in opposite directions, and had a big arm-waving argument. This was of course highly entertaining to me. “What a pair of wacky cut-ups!” I said to myself. “If we ever reach land, I will kill them with my emergency signal flare gun!”

Finally, after 21/2 hours, which in a small, bouncing boat feels approximately as long as the Reagan administration, Steele pointed to the horizon ahead. I looked out, and experiencing the same emotion that Columbus must have felt when he first caught sight of the Statue of liberty, I saw: nothing. But a few minutes later I thought I saw something dark and low against the sky, so I strained my eyeballs and ... Yes! There it was! Bimini! Or possibly Iceland! I didn’t care. At least we were somewhere.

“Good boy, Buster,” I said, patting him on his compass. Praise is crucial to proper boat maintenance.